


Lockdown

by kbvibes



Series: Shifting Dreams verse [2]
Category: CrissColfer - Fandom, Glee RPF
Genre: Angst, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Romance, Stupid Boys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-27
Updated: 2014-08-27
Packaged: 2018-02-14 23:45:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2207553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kbvibes/pseuds/kbvibes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short one-shot that predates the beginning of the narrative in Shifting Dreams. A quick look into the complicated past.</p><p>Darren is an idiot. Chris feels like an even bigger idiot for caring that Darren is an idiot. Tensions overflow in a bathroom.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lockdown

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a quick, angsty one-shot would have taken place at least a year before Shifting begins. 
> 
> I said their story wasn't always a pretty one back then. These were the dark days, my friends...

He stands back and just watches, until he can't. It's hard for his mind to even wrap itself around the fact that the guy standing under the lights across the room is Darren.  
This isn't the Darren that Chris knows, not at all.

This Darren wears flashier clothes, clothes that the man he knows and _lo…_

_Stop it. Stop stop stop!_

...that Chris knows, would hate. This guy who walks in with his arm around a woman who Chris knows is a friend, who is trying so hard to sell himself as something he's not, this is a stranger. Chris shouldn't have even come.

He orders two consecutive glasses of merlot before switching to tequila. He tries to keep to the shadows, only chats with people when he has to, but one eye is always on _them,_ across the room. The wrongness of it makes his skin crawl and makes his mind swirl black and red.

This isn't Darren. This is... it's a tragedy that he can't watch.

He finds himself pulling out his phone and sending the text before he can second guess himself.

**Meet me in the bathroom in the back**

It isn't an invitation, it's a demand.

When Darren pushes through the door and his eyes land on Chris, at first they’re shining, along with his red-faced smile. 

Chris wishes for a moment he _was_ there to make him happy, but that just isn't the case.

"I didn't know you were going to come tonight. I hoped you would, but we haven't been..." 

_Talking? Communicating at all? Able to even tolerate each other in months?_

Chris stands with his back against one of the sinks on the wall. "I shouldn't have. I doubt you'll remember I was here, in the morning anyhow, with the way you're tossing them back out there." It's not really fair, they're both well on their way to drunk. Chris simply doesn't feel like being fair at the moment.

Darren's posture tightens at his cold tone, but his eyes are pleading, soft in the harsh overhead florescent lights. "I thought maybe you wanted to talk, finally. Or we could try to get out of here, go back to your place if you want?" He takes a few steps towards Chris, but stops when the other man spins away.

Chris can't look at those wet eyes in the streaky mirror behind him, so he focuses on his own reflection instead. It's easier to lie that way. His face is flushed red, not in an appealing blushing cheeks way, but in angry, uneven, red blotches around his eyes and across the bridge of his nose. "No." He closes his eyes and turns back around to face him, Darren looks lost. He doesn't blame him, it's not like the way he feels makes much sense to himself right now either. "You really don't get it. I don't want you there. I don't want you in my home or in my bed when you smell like whiskey and designer imposter perfume, Darren. I don't want that. I don't even fucking like you like this."

Darren's jaw clenches, his teeth grinding beneath the thickly stubble-covered skin that Chris can't stop wanting to lick the sweat from, to see if it tastes the same as it had two months ago, or if he's changed his cologne or lotion since then. Darren takes three slow, measured steps in Chris' direction until there is no room left between their bodies.

"Then why in the hell did you call me in here?"

That's the question, isn't it? Why did he? Why does he always?

It's not like he is going to just say "because I don't want her hands on you" or "because you don't fucking belong to them" or anything of the sort that would essentially just mean "you're mine."

"I thought someone should tell you how ridiculous you are. God knows no one else would dare tell the man of the hour, the golden boy, that he is making himself look like a grade-A douchebag." _Because I need you to be better than this! I need you to want me enough, you stupid, beautiful, stupid, stupid asshole!_

His brain screams at Darren so loudly that he presses his lips together in a white, bloodless line to make sure that none of the thoughts leak out.

Darren shuffles his weight back and forth between his feet, like the floor beneath him has been made precarious and unsteady by the pulsating tension in the air between them. Chris watches his fists clench and relax at his sides four times, his eyes catch their tremble on the last release.

"I never know what to say to you. You've got to give me half of a reason to even care about the shit coming out of your mouth right now, or I am going back to the party, Chris."

Chris should just let him go. He is angry as hell and Darren is well on his way there himself, but finally having Darren to himself, even if it's in the locked men's room of a rented event space, forces his walls down just a little. Despite everything, he needed to be here.

"Tonight was important for you," he admits, suddenly finding the metal paper towel dispenser on the wall rather fascinating. Anything to keep from seeing those eyes. "I guess I... it felt like I should be here. Even if I hate seeing you out there like that."

Darren's shaky breath is audible in the quiet room, and the sound of his footsteps echoes around the tiled floor and walls. Chris refuses to look up until Darren is less than a foot away. "I wanted you here. I usually do." He steadies himself for a moment, Chris sees the adam's apple in his throat bob, working up the nerve for something, and then he is sliding his arm around Chris' waist. "I invited you because I did want you here. Shit doesn't feel right when you won't talk to me."

Chris doesn't say anything, but he doesn't shove him away either. Darren's smell and the way his presence fills up the tiny room has a way of leeching the anger out of him. Always has.

"You know that all of that out there, it's... It's all just something that I have to do, right? You've gotta know that none of this shit is-"

"I know when you're wearing a costume." Chris stops him before he goes too far, and the fragile hold he has on his temper fails and he goes off again. Because that's what it is, the Darren who stands between his legs right now won't exist once he walks out of the bathroom door. Well, no, he will, but he'll be hiding inside a completely different person. "Just go. You need to walk out first." Even as Chris is telling Darren to leave, he can't restrain his fingers from lifting a curl of sweaty black hair away from Darren's temple where it had gotten stuck to his skin. His fingers linger on the side of his face. It's the most that he has willingly touched Darren in months. The shorter man's thick eyelashes flutter like bird wings at the contact.

Darren licks his lips and stays rooted to the spot. "You're sure you don't want me to come over after? I can get out of here by 12, 12:30..." Breathing inside of each others space like they are, the offer is almost more than Chris can resist.

But he does.

"No, not tonight." He hates himself for the words. "I can't share you like this. I don't know how." He sees the fire dim inside Darren's eyes like a bucket of water tossed onto a flame. The self-blame and the doubt begin to smother him again, and Chris doesn't want that either. He leans forward and presses his lips to the side of Darren's face, his lower lip barely colliding with the edge of Darren's mouth. He lingers there long enough to feel one humid, surprised, whiskey-scented breath gust out over his face before he pulls away. "I don't want to go on avoiding each other. I don't want... Tomorrow, call me tomorrow, okay?"

Darren nods. Sex would be easy, always is between them. But in the end, it's only ever made everything messier, and that isn't what either of them wants.

Darren nods and takes a step back. One step becomes two, and then three, but he is almost all the way across the restroom before he turns away, and breaks their gazes. Chris grips the cold ceramic of the sink behind him with both hands to keep himself from reaching out and pulling Darren back. His heart slams to a stop in his chest when Darren pauses at the door, one hand already on the handle.

"Chris..."

That's all it takes. The elastic holding back the million things he is feeling at once, breaks and Chris does along with it. He crosses the room in four strides, and he's kissing him. 

Chris kisses him hard, and possessively, giving Darren just a taste of the dark, red wine-flavored thoughts he's been having from across the room before he stormed into the bathroom.

Thoughts of how pretty Darren looks on his knees with Chris in his mouth, of how he's heard him beg... Of how he looks first thing in the morning with impossible hair and sleep crust in his eyes... Of who he really is, and how he loves. Because Chris knows all of it, and none of those people in there posing and jostling for Darren's attention, ever will. Not like he does.

He kisses Darren's mouth and gives himself a moment of reprieve from the frustration of wanting someone who _feels_ like his, but never can be.

He kisses him, and makes damn sure that Darren can feel it.

They break away breathing raggedly.

"Angel, listen..." 

_**NO.** _

The endearment shuts Chris down immediately. He pushes Darren away until his back collides with the wooden door roughly. "Go, Darren. That's your party out there. Can't keep them waiting." 

He can see Darren ready himself for another fight, one Chris knows no one can win. "Fine, I'll go first. I'll... tomorrow." He doesn't spare the other man another look before throwing open the bathroom door, and rushing back out into the music and the crowd.

It's not as hard to watch after that. Whether that's due to the kiss or just more alcohol, he doesn't know. 

You can stand beside someone, and not be with them at all. Just like you can not be with somebody, and have them still be a part of you. Like it or not.


End file.
